


She Loved (this place, so very much)

by Markition



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3593208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Markition/pseuds/Markition
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nearly 300 years since they won their independence from Home World, and she still can't stop thinking of herself as a soldier. Rose is love, nothing but love, and Pearl doesn't deserve it. She doesn't think she ever will. So she serves, and hopes that Rose doesn't notice that serving her means so much more than just following orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Loved (this place, so very much)

Pearl found her sitting outside one of the old landing sights. It was the western auxiliary crater ID 2374, populated with the crumbling remains of gemtech and the space pods the drones had arrived in. Sites like #2374 pockmarked the surface of the planet--once craters of scorched ground and dead earth that were as visceral a sign of the gems’ malignance as anything they’d ever done to that planet. There were thousands of drone landings by the time the kindergartens were established, all open sores in the wake of the war. By every calculation Pearl had ever done, the initial invasion should have been enough to wipe the planet of all indigenous life. It was by chance and plain luck that the Earth had survived.

These craters, like lesions across an otherwise scenic land. A disease the gems had brought with them from the stars.

And one by one, Rose Quartz was healing them.

This particular landing sight was a shallow, wide low-velocity shuttle that had landed badly outside a crumbling old ridge. Pearl remembered how it was originally, raw dirt and destruction. It was different now. The entire landscape was covered in a flowering meadow, abruptly full of life--seemingly overnight.

She followed the path the spread of the grass created, and leapt down the side of the crater. Rose was kneeling over a sapling at the bottom.

Pearl landed in a single fluid motion a respectful distance behind Rose, every iteration of it calculated. She immediately fell to one knee before her authority. Rose did not stop fussing over the tree.

“Rose, Garnet is back,” Pearl said. “She has a report for you.”

Despite the fact that the war was over and none of the Crystal Gems were in the Diamond Authority’s army any longer, Pearl still had a hard time not falling back on the simple cleanness of a war debriefing. The missions gave her structure, and she would forever be thankful to Rose for instituting them, but nothing else about this new life on earth was the same. She had no clear-cut orders, or procedures. She had no structure anymore.

It was silly to kneel, still. She knew that. But it made her feel like things were still in order. And she needed that.

Rose turned fractionally and smiled at Pearl. She gestured her closer with one outstretched hand. “Come here, I want to show you something.”

Pearl rolled to her feet and moved to stand beside Rose. She knelt, secure in her own subservience. Rose snaked her arm around Pearl and dragged her in close, without shame or self-consciousness. Pearl could feel Rose pressing against her back, and Rose’s hand guided hers softly to the budding leaves of the sapling she’d been working on. They were close--so close--and Pearl was immediately blushing uncontrollably. She could barely focus on the lesson Rose was trying to teach.

“Watch how it branches,” Rose said, lips dangerously close to her ear. “It’s self-defining, Pearl. Even the least sentient organism has the power to choose what it will become. Isn’t it amazing?”

It wouldn’t be amazing if Rose wasn’t so very in love with it, but Pearl did not say that. She was sure Rose knew. “It’s so... _chaotic_ ,” Pearl murmured. “Nothing matches.”

Rose shook her head. She chuckled. “Life accommodates for its own entropy. It’s never chaotic--every living thing has its own personality. You can always count on life to want to live. Nothing else in the universe is like that. It’s beautiful.”

Pearl turned her head and frowned up at Rose. “You’re beautiful,” she said--mostly without thinking. The immediate embarrassment that hammered down on her made her consider just releasing her corporeal form and hiding for a little while. How obvious could she be?

She expected some kind of rejection, because certainly that was out of line. Pearl was still a soldier, and this was her authority, and she very much liked that structure. She didn’t want to see it falter, she didn’t want Rose to change how she looked at her because of some stupid--

Rose took her by the shoulders, turned her gently, and kissed her.

And for a brief moment, Pearl’s storm went quiet. And it was a peace she had never known before.

“My Pearl,” Rose hummed. She smiled, and for the life of her Pearl couldn’t look away.

She stared at Rose, eyes huge and glassy, for a breathing moment that she would save forever.

“We--um. We should really get back, Garnet is…” Pearl fumbled.

“Of course,” Rose said. She laughed, helped Pearl to her feet. “Come with me.”

Rose kept her arm linked with Pearl’s the whole trip back to base. It was not an afternoon she would ever forget.


End file.
